Fluorescent and incandescent lighting are commonly used lighting technologies for various lighting applications such as for example illumination of an office space or a shopping mall. However, incandescent lighting is not competitively energy efficient and fluorescent lighting tubes commonly contain environmentally unfriendly elements that are not easily disposed of. In recent years, light emitting diodes (LEDs) have emerged as a strong competitor on the market for lighting applications, mainly due to their superior energy efficiency over other existing technologies.
The previous technology may not reach the high demands on design and functionality which comes with the recent development of lighting devices. For example, new lighting effects are sought after which extend beyond the capabilities of previous technology. Such lighting effects may for example be arbitrarily moving or deformable light patterns.
With increasing complexity of both integrated circuits as well as of circuits comprising discrete components arranged on a PCB follows problems related to the communication between components and providing electrical power to the devices. In order to achieve highly a versatile lighting device, the light sources of the devices has to be able to communicate in a fast and almost simultaneous manner. Furthermore, it would be desirable to be able to place the light sources of a lighting device almost arbitrarily with respect to each other and also with respect to the power source.
With the present technology, communication paths between different components (e.g. light-emitting diodes), and for providing power becomes more and more challenging due to the number of interconnections. For example, with an increasing number of discrete components such as e.g. light-emitting diodes on a PCB, the connection paths becomes more complex while the area of the PCB may be limited, which may in turn lead to limitations in functionality of the final device. Accordingly, it is desirable to find new approaches for addressing the complexity and drawbacks that comes with communication between components of lighting devices for providing versatile lighting.